Meat products are prepared for consumption in a variety of ways. For example, the muscle of an animal may be seasoned, jerked, kippered, mixed with other ingredients, as well as cased, such as in sausages. These meat products may be pre-cooked or par-cooked for storage and latter consumption. Meat products are most often consumed on their own, or as part of dish, such as a stew, a soup, or as a supplement to pasta or other food dishes, including omelets, and the like.
When a meat product, and especially a cured meat such as ham, is stored in a food environment, such as a soup or a liquid egg product, for a period of time (e.g., on the shelf of a supermarket) the meat product Loses its freshly cooked or cured meat characteristics. A food product may be generally defined as a solid, liquid, and/or semi-moist environment that alters or degrades the interior and exterior color, flavor, and/or texture of a meat product during storage in the solid, liquid, and/or semi-moist environment and during and after heating and/or cooking after storage in a solid, liquid, and/or semi-moist environment, such as an oxidative food product. For example, a food composition may be predicted as oxidative by measuring the electrochemical potential of the food composition.
Consumers are informed of freshness and desirability by a food's interior and exterior color, flavor, texture, and odor. For instance, a ham product is typically given a cured color by the interaction of nitrites and myoglobin, but a food product, such as a liquid egg product, will interact with the characteristic cured red color of the ham product and cause the ham product to turn an undesirable color, such as gray, black, or green. Moreover, this interaction affects the flavor and texture of the meat product. Unexpected colors are negatively perceived by consumers (see for example, Suess, D., Green Eggs, and Ham).
Food processors spend great effort in working a lengthy temporal period of stability into their products. This effort is expended for both economic and safety reasons. It is apparent that retaining palatability is desirable to consumers, vendors, and processors alike, as it allows finished products to retain their value for a greater period of time. Further, pre-expectation spoilage may make the product undesirable during subsequent purchasing opportunities. Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a meat product that does not appreciably change interior and exterior color, flavor, and/or texture as an ingredient in a food product.